Philanthropy and places of care (xenodochia) in the late Roman Empire, 350-600 CE

• Grant number: 18/08968-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: August 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Paulo Abreu Funari
• Grantee: Júlio Matzenbacher Zampietro
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Hospitals and philanthropic institutions in general are topics that have received little attention from historians of Late Antiquity. Notable works on this topic include Demetrios Constantelos's Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (CONSTANTELOS, 1968), wholly dedicated to the topic, and Timothy S. Miller's The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire (MILLER, 1997), whose greater part is dedicated to these institutions in Antiquity. Complete works on the subject, however, are rare; the bulk of publications consists in articles written by scholars not specialized in this topic. This scarcity of detailed studies, although explained by a proportional scarcity of primary sources, written or archaeological, seems unjustified. The study of hospitals can be a good tool to assess changes in power relations in the Late Roman Empire, as argued by Peter Brown (BROWN, 2002), as well as a way of comprehending important features of the Late Antique landscape that affected the general population in a myriad of ways (HORDEN, 2005). Following these suggestions in the literature, our research chiefly intends to comprehend how Byzantine hospitals related to their social surroundings from the fourth to the sixth centuries of the Common Era. We also aim at understanding internal aspects of these institutions, ranging from its healthcaring practices to the objectives of their members.